Liberating Grace

This is the sermon that Tullian Tchividjian, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, gave to the first annual Liberate Conference last year. The conference is coming up in 4 months. Check out the Liberate website here.

Preemptive Repentance

“Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure, what’s going on?” 

“Let’s go where we can have some privacy.”

*door closes*

“Have a seat.”

“I wanted to talk to you today because something very serious has come to my attention.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I wanted to give you the chance to come clean because… we know.”

Scariest two words I think anyone can hear… we know. They mean that you’ve been exposed. They mean that your secret isn’t safe any longer. They mean that your image and reputation has been shattered. They mean that you’ve finally gotten to the point where your failed attempts to overcome your struggles in isolation are now no longer an option. You’ve been found out. They know… they finally know. After all this time of secrecy and hiding, they know. And now there is no turning back.

I think many of us have been in situations like this, most likely with smaller issues than bigger ones. Maybe you got caught sneaking out of your house, hanging out with some friends you weren’t supposed to be with, dating the boy or girl your parents forbade you from seeing, drinking or smoking with friends, lying about your grades, talking badly about your boss, etc. Whatever situation we’ve been in, we know what its like to be caught… and it’s the worst. You feel completely helpless, embarrassed, angry, ashamed, sad, defensive, and a whole host of other emotions.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the issue of getting caught because of a few things that I have seen happen recently. It’s made me wonder what it takes for people to get so deep into sin that they completely abandon reason and, seemingly, the calling to obey and love Jesus. It makes me wonder what steps we should take to ensure we never get to that place. I know how prone I am to hide and isolate. I don’t want my sin exposed because I fear what people might think of me, or how I might be treated. I fear what I might lose—whether that be status, importance, or love. And when I am overcome with shame and guilt, I don’t want to be exposed in my sin. I don’t want the sin, but I know how often I have felt like I’m too far gone for anyone to love or care about. I say that I wonder what it takes for people to be so deep in sin that they completely abandon reason… well, I’ve been there. We all have been there. But there’s got to be a way out.

For the beauty of the good

http://www.vimeo.com/45592211

This is an awesome discussion about sanctification and the Christian life.

“If I’m saved by works, there’s a limit on what God can ask of you…  If I’m saved by grace because of what Jesus has done for me, there’s no limit to what He can ask of me and my obedience must be unconditional.”

Oh man. Mind BLOWN!

Grace on the Ground

Check it. Jono Linebaugh teaches at Knox Theological Seminary (right across the street from Coral Ridge), and preached last Sunday. The sermon series is called Grace on the Ground. Loved it. Needed this one for sure.

If you want to check our more sermons at Coral Ridge, click here. I highly suggest it.

The God of Grace and Goodness

I was just watching a movie in the apartment that I share with two other guys who are working at Coral Ridge this summer. The room was filled with about ten interns and we were watching a movie called Three Idiots, which is an Indian film with English subtitles about the lives of three students at one of the finest engineering schools in India. Without ruining the film (and we haven’t quite finished it since it’s about three hours long and we all need to be up early for church in the morning), it’s a comedic social commentary on the way that school in particular (and perhaps all the schools like it in India) forces its students into a rat race against the others, striving and competing for the top spots. One of the main characters is trying to show them that perhaps scores are not the most important element of learning, and that you can do well in school and yet not truly understand the important things that you are learning or about life in general. The pressure put on these students drive many to commit suicide, and those who memorize text books seem to be rewarded. Comprehension, on the other hand, is not always gained through memorization.

As they were preparing for exams, they showed that many of the students sought to bribe their gods with promises of money each month, milk for the snake god, grass for the cow god, and one student promised not to have any X-rated thoughts about the girls in His class if only they would grant him success on his test the next day.

Yet I was sitting in the room with ten interns from different schools in the US who were drawn to serve at Coral Ridge because they believed in a God who call people out of their sin and into new life by grace—grace that does not depend on our ability and, if anything, is actually given because we don’t have the ability to earn it ourselves. We serve a God who is immeasurably good to His people, not because we deserve it but because Jesus Christ perfectly accomplished everything that we could never accomplish. He has given us His own righteousness when all we have to offer Him are our filthy rags of “good” deeds and, many times, a faith that is too weak to sustain us (Mark 9:24).

I’m so glad that we don’t have to bribe God into loving us, as if we can somehow purchase His favor. Rather, God came and shed His own blood to purchase His favor on our behalf. That is good news. That is the Gospel we proclaim.

I can hardly believe that I’m here in Fort Lauderdale and working at a church where the Gospel is proclaimed so clearly. I can’t believe that someone such as me, a sinner who is weak and fallen, has been so blessed by a perfectly holy and righteous God who has chosen to offer me a relationship with Him, purchased by His own death and resurrection.

I don’t know what this summer holds for me. I have no idea what the future holds for me. The only thing that I am sure of is this: God is more good than I could ever begin to understand, and His thoughts towards me are as countless as the grains of the sand. I have grace and freedom in Christ and a repaired relationship with my God. And, while I have no idea what His plans for my life is, where I might attend grad school, who I’ll marry, whether I’ll become a pastor, or even if I’ll live another day, I am sure that God will glorify Himself in my life as I trust Him, through life or death. God will work everything for good—ultimate good—and He will use the weak to show the strong that there is hope and grace in repentance and faith.

I am excited for all He is doing and all that He has done. I’m truly blown away. I deserve none of it, yet He gives it anyway. That’s good news that I can shout to the world. That’s good news that I hope to shout to the world for the rest of my life.

Liberate: the Teaching Ministry of Tullian Tchividjian

I’m so excited because Liberate finally launched! This website is going to contain all of Pastor Tullian’s (teaching pastor at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church) sermons, blog posts, articles, and lots of other awesome resources from the partners in ministry of Coral Ridge. I cannot believe that I am going to have the chance to work for Coral Ridge this summer. It is such an awesome opportunity and I know that God is going to use it to grow me in so many ways!

Please check out the website! There is a lot of great stuff on there already!

Check out the information about my internship: David goes to Florida!

Do Christians hypocritically pick and choose when they discuss morality?

Awesome article by Tim Keller about the charge that Christians are inconsistent because we pick and choose what things we teach and believe about the Old Testament law in particular. I had to repost it:

Old Testament Law and The Charge of Inconsistency

June 2012
by Tim Keller

I find it frustrating when I read or hear columnists, pundits, or journalists dismiss Christians as inconsistent because “they pick and choose which of the rules in the Bible to obey.” What I hear most often is “Christians ignore lots of Old Testament texts—about not eating raw meat or pork or shellfish, not executing people for breaking the Sabbath, not wearing garments woven with two kinds of material and so on. Then they condemn homosexuality. Aren’t you just picking and choosing what they want to believe from the Bible?”

It is not that I expect everyone to have the capability of understanding that the whole Bible is about Jesus and God’s plan to redeem his people, but I vainly hope that one day someone will access their common sense (or at least talk to an informed theological advisor) before leveling the charge of inconsistency.

First of all, let’s be clear that it’s not only the Old Testament that has proscriptions about homosexuality. The New Testament has plenty to say about it, as well. Even Jesus says, in his discussion of divorce in Matthew 19:3-12 that the original design of God was for one man and one woman to be united as one flesh, and failing that, (v. 12) persons should abstain from marriage and from sex.

However, let’s get back to considering the larger issue of inconsistency regarding things mentioned in the OT that are no longer practiced by the New Testament people of God. Most Christians don’t know what to say when confronted about this. Here’s a short course on the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament:

The Old Testament devotes a good amount of space to describing the various sacrifices that were to be offered in the tabernacle (and later temple) to atone for sin so that worshippers could approach a holy God. As part of that sacrificial system there was also a complex set of rules for ceremonial purity and cleanness. You could only approach God in worship if you ate certain foods and not others, wore certain forms of dress, refrained from touching a variety of objects, and so on. This vividly conveyed, over and over, that human beings are spiritually unclean and can’t go into God’s presence without purification.

But even in the Old Testament, many writers hinted that the sacrifices and the temple worship regulations pointed forward to something beyond them. (cf. 1 Samuel 15:21-22; Psalm 50:12-15; 51:17; Hosea 6:6). When Christ appeared he declared all foods ‘clean’ (Mark 7:19) and he ignored the Old Testament clean laws in other ways, touching lepers and dead bodies.

But the reason is made clear. When he died on the cross the veil in the temple was ripped through, showing that the need for the entire sacrificial system with all its clean laws had been done away with. Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice for sin, and now Jesus makes us “clean.”

The entire book of Hebrews explains that the Old Testament ceremonial laws were not so much abolished as fulfilled by Christ. Whenever we pray ‘in Jesus name’, we ‘have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus’ (Hebrews 10:19). It would, therefore, be deeply inconsistent with the teaching of the Bible as a whole if we were to continue to follow the ceremonial laws.

The New Testament gives us further guidance about how to read the Old Testament. Paul makes it clear in places like Romans 13:8ff that the apostles understood the Old Testament moral law to still be binding on us. In short, the coming of Christ changed how we worship but not how we live. The moral law is an outline of God’s own character—his integrity, love, and faithfulness. And so all the Old Testament says about loving our neighbor, caring for the poor, generosity with our possessions, social relationships, and commitment to our family is still in force. The New Testament continues to forbid killing or committing adultery, and all the sex ethic of the Old Testament is re-stated throughout the New Testament (Matthew 5:27-30; 1 Corinthians 6:9-20; 1 Timothy 1:8-11.) If the New Testament has reaffirmed a commandment, then it is still in force for us today.

Further, the New Testament explains another change between the Testaments. Sins continue to be sins—but the penalties change. In the Old Testament things like adultery or incest were punishable with civil sanctions like execution. This is because at that time God’s people existed in the form of a nation-state and so all sins had civil penalties.

But in the New Testament the people of God are an assembly of churches all over the world, living under many different governments. The church is not a civil government, and so sins are dealt with by exhortation and, at worst, exclusion from membership. This is how a case of incest in the Corinthian church is dealt with by Paul (1 Corinthians 5:1ff. and 2 Corinthians 2:7-11.) Why this change? Under Christ, the gospel is not confined to a single nation—it has been released to go into all cultures and peoples.

Once you grant the main premise of the Bible—about the surpassing significance of Christ and his salvation—then all the various parts of the Bible make sense. Because of Christ, the ceremonial law is repealed. Because of Christ the church is no longer a nation-state imposing civil penalties. It all falls into place. However, if you reject the idea of Christ as Son of God and Savior, then, of course, the Bible is at best a mish-mash containing some inspiration and wisdom, but most of it would have to be rejected as foolish or erroneous.

So where does this leave us? There are only two possibilities. If Christ is God, then this way of reading the Bible makes sense and is perfectly consistent with its premise. The other possibility is that you reject Christianity’s basic thesis—you don’t believe Jesus was the resurrected Son of God—and then the Bible is no sure guide for you about much of anything. But the one thing you can’t really say in fairness is that Christians are being inconsistent with their beliefs to accept the moral statements in the Old Testament while not practicing other ones.

One way to respond to the charge of inconsistency may be to ask a counter-question—“Are you asking me to deny the very heart of my Christian beliefs?” If you are asked, “Why do you say that?” you could respond, “If I believe Jesus is the the resurrected Son of God, I can’t follow all the ‘clean laws’ of diet and practice, and I can’t offer animal sacrifices. All that would be to deny the power of Christ’s death on the cross. And so those who really believe in Christ must follow some Old Testament texts and not others.”

Source: http://redeemer.com/news_and_events/newsletter/?aid=363

True repentance

Great post by Jared Wilson at the Gospel Coalition. Repentance is not easy, particularly when our hearts (certainly my heart) rush to excuses and self-centered protection. We don’t want to face the consequences of our decisions, but the Gospel leads us to a different path. We can be forthcoming about the reality of our sin because the Cross is the most blatant indictment of our individual evil and the unmeasurable grace and forgiveness of God. Jesus Christ was tortured and killed because of our sin. There is no greater rebuke than that. And, at the same time, God’s love for us—while we were still sinners—is displayed in His willingness to send His Son to provide atonement for our sins (1 John 4:9-10). 

I need a heart of repentance.

How Do You Know When Someone Is Repentant?: 12 Signs

How do you know when someone is repentant? In his helpful little book Church Discipline, Jonathan Leeman offers some guidance:

A few verses before Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 18 about church discipline, he provides us with help for determining whether an individual is characteristically repentant: would the person be willing to cut off a hand or tear out an eye rather than repeat the sin (Matt. 18:8-9)? That is to say, is he or she willing to do whatever it takes to fight against the sin? Repenting people, typically, are zealous about casting off their sin. That’s what God’s Spirit does inside of them. When this happens, one can expect to see a willingness to accept outside counsel. A willingness to inconvenience their schedules. A willingness to confess embarrassing things. A willingness to make financial sacrifices or lose friends or end relationships. (p. 72)

These are good indicators, and I believe we can add a few more.

Here are 12 signs we have a genuinely repentant heart:

1. We name our sin as sin and do not spin it or excuse it, and further, we demonstrate “godly sorrow,” which is to say, a grief chiefly about the sin itself, not just a grief about being caught or having to deal with the consequences of sin.

2. We actually confessed before we were caught or the circumstantial consequences of our sin caught up with us.

3. If found out, we confess immediately or very soon after and “come clean,” rather than having to have the full truth pulled from us. Real repentance is typically accompanied by transparency.

4. We have a willingness and eagerness to make amends. We will do whatever it takes to make things right and to demonstrate we have changed.

5. We are patient with those we’ve hurt or victimized, spending as much time as is required listening to them without jumping to defend ourselves.

6. We are patient with those we’ve hurt or victimized as they process their hurt, and we don’t pressure them or “guilt” them into forgiving us.

7. We are willing to confess our sin even in the face of serious consequences (including undergoing church discipline, having to go to jail, or having a spouse leave us).

8. We may grieve the consequences of our sin but we do not bristle under them or resent them. We understand that sometimes our sin causes great damage to others that is not healed in the short term (or perhaps ever).

9. If our sin involves addiction or a pattern of behavior, we do not neglect to seek help with a counselor, a solid twelve-step program, or even a rehabilitation center.

10. We don’t resent accountability, pastoral rebuke, or church discipline.

11. We seek our comfort in the grace of God in Jesus Christ, not simply in being free of the consequences of our sin.

12. We are humble and teachable.

As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter.

– 2 Corinthians 7:9-11

John Newton on the Christian Life

I am not what I ought to be.
Ah! how imperfect and deficient.

Not what I might be,
considering my privileges and opportunities.

Not what I wish to be.
God, who knows my heart, knows I wish to be like him.

I am not what I hope to be;
ere long to drop this clay tabernacle, to be like him and see him as He is.

Not what I once was,
a child of sin, and slave of the devil.

Though not all these,

not what I ought to be,
not what I might be,
not what I wish or hope to be, and
not what once was,

I think I can truly say with the apostle,

“By the grace of God I am what I am.”

—John Newton (1725-1807), cited in Letters of John Newton, p. 400.

Life as a Repeat Offender

This is a great post by one of my wonderful sisters at Santa Clara:

There’s nothing worse than being a repeat offender when it comes to sin.

Before knowing Jesus, we live life the only way we know how: our way. Sin hurts, but only because of its consequences. We fail to recognize who we are ultimately sinning against: God.

Then we meet Him. We slowly wrap our minds around His character, His holiness, and His love. It starts to click that God’s wrath was poured onto His sinless son because of OUR SIN. Your sin. My sin. It’s personal. Once we see that, our motivation to flee from sin is much stronger.

But we’re still in a fallen world full of temptation. And when (not if) we fall, returning to old ways of living or succumbing to old temptations is frustrating. It’s grieving. It’s disgusting.

To read the rest of her post, click HERE